“there is scarcely anything that could offend me in modern England which is not far more offensive in modern Germany. It is there that these things have had their real success; it is there that they will have their real failure. You may say that Germany leads the modern world. You may, if you like, say that Germany is the modern world. But, if that be so, what is called the modern world is, amid general rejoicings, coming to an end. With all its mirthless cynicism, with all its unmanly militarism, with its sham science and shifty diplomacy, with its excuses for the powerful and its routine for the poor, with its long words of explanation and its very short cuts in conduct, with all its care of the self, and all its carelessness of the soul, what some call the Modern Spirit is cast out of heaven like Lucifer, Son of the Morning. It is cut down to the earth, that did weaken the nations.”

G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News, September 9, 2016, quoted in “GKC on Scripture * Conducted by Peter Floriani” in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #1 (Sept.-Oct. 2022)

In my latest Epoch Times column I mock the notion that NATO can use “pressure” to stop Trudeau from being irresponsible, smug and daffy.

“To see [Pope John Paul II, Karol] Wojtyla as a ‘Christian radical,’ then, is to try to understand his radicalism as an example of what the American philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once described as the simplicity that lies on the far side of complexity.”

George Weigel Witness to Hope [noting that the etymological root of radical is the Latin radix meaning root].

“Our army is composed of the scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth.”

“The British soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact – they have all enlisted for drink.”

“The scum of the earth... but what fine soldiers we have made them.”

All from The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington] [and I think it only fair to put them all together for a complete picture].

In my latest Epoch Times column I ponder uneasily what George Washington, or indeed Sir John A. Macdonald or the Duke of Wellington, would make of modern politics.

“Here again, to use Napoleon’s maxim, geography explains history.”

John A. Garraty and Peter Gay, eds, The Columbia History of the World

“Hard pounding, gentlemen. Let’s see who pounds the longest.”

The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington]

“Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.”

The Duke of Wellington according to AZ Quotes [https://www.azquotes.com/author/15482-Duke_of_Wellington]